Mat 15:7-8

"Ye hypocrites, well did Esaias prophesy of you, saying, This people
draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but
their heart is far from me" Matthew 15:7-8

Elsewhere these notes discuss authenticity. God was always hammering about authenticity. What makes it so hard? Evidently, it's a problem with truth. Reckoning. Repentance is an admission of fault that produces: 1.) changes in thought and 2.) changes in behavior.

Say one is lost in the deep, tall timber of the wilderness, on a nameless track. It's dark, so that no shadows are cast, there is no breeze to bring the clue of a scent to follow. Hopelessly mis-placed. Nothing is familiar, yet it is all the exact same as a few miles ago. Energy is waning, it will soon be too dark to even move.

And then -- some fact, some unarguable truth breaks into the mind, all of the confusion is now ordered. An abject sense of which way to turn. This is reckoning. Who would NOT turn and go in the way of escape?

God is not mocked, nor can He be fooled by hypocritical veneer.

"For day after day they seek me out;

they seem eager to know my ways,

as if they were a nation that does what is right

and has not forsaken the commands of its God.

They ask me for just decisions

and seem eager for God to come near them.

‘Why have we fasted,’ they say,

‘and you have not seen it?

Why have we humbled ourselves,

and you have not noticed?’" Is. 58:2-3

If God does not seem present, it's likely some kind of worldly baggage interferes with His holy presence.

“Speak to the entire assembly of Israel and say to them: ‘Be holy because I, the LORD your God, am holy." Leviticus 19:2